


In Hindsight

by Neelh



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Body Horror, Spoilers For Journal 3, Stangst, Suicidal Thoughts, The Power Of Mabel, mentions of bodily functions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 12:25:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7844866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neelh/pseuds/Neelh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You have spent your whole life wishing to be a hero. Over the years, it turns from being part of a duo of adventurers, to being a famous and groundbreaking scientist, to being ready to sacrifice everything that you are to stop Bill Cipher. You would do all of that, and stand alone. You would be a rock against the harsh winds of life; one that was immune to weathering and erosion.</p><p>In hindsight, you were never truly destined to be a hero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Hindsight

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not sure what content warnings should be used, so if you find one that isn't mentioned in the tags then please tell me!!! it's twenty to three right now and i'm emotionally compromised by the journal still

It’s been years since you started studying the mysteries of Gravity Falls. Well, it’s been over four decades, to be precise, and thirty of them were spent away from your place of study.

Well, it’s not much of a place of study now. A place of torture and madness, perhaps, but not a place for studying, and not a place for a home.

You had never really thought of Gravity Falls as home until you had been away from it for a long time. It wasn’t the monsters and the promise of knowledge that beckoned you back into those dark, inviting woods, but rather the sense of belonging. In hindsight, maybe your brother was a better fit for Gravity Falls than you ever were. Stan’s garish, ridiculous, and social ways were, somehow, closer to the town’s weird ways than your scientific reasoning.

You have spent your whole life wishing to be a hero. Over the years, it turns from being part of a duo of adventurers, to being a famous and groundbreaking scientist, to being ready to sacrifice everything that you are to stop Bill Cipher. You would do all of that, and stand alone. You would be a rock against the harsh winds of life; one that was immune to weathering and erosion.

 

In hindsight, you were never truly destined to be a hero.

 

Well, that assumes that destiny is an actual thing. The Oracle tells you about destinies, and so did the fortune teller all those years ago, and even Bill did sometimes, but you never really believe it. Well, you let yourself have wishful fantasies about what great feats that someone told you that you would one day achieve; but it isn’t really a thing that was definitely going to happen. It’s just a likely outcome due to your hard work and genius.

And when it all comes to a head, when you think that you are going to complete your maybe-imaginary destiny and defeat Bill, you are forced to go home.

Well, you say forced, and under any other circumstances you would be very happy to go home. Only, you know, the portal opens into the Nightmare Realm so it’s kind of a pain for many different reasons. First of all, if you hadn’t been there, Bill’s henchmaniacs, whatever that means, would have gotten loose and started the apocalypse early. Secondly, you were literally just about to kill Bill Cipher.

 

In hindsight, though, you probably shouldn’t have punched Stanley in the face as soon as you saw him. You still do feel pretty bad about that.

 

You don’t think much of your family when you first returned. Soos is too stupid, Wendy is too ironic, Mabel is too silly, and Dipper is too… Well, you had misjudged all of them, but him he most.

You wouldn’t say that you have issues with emotional attachments. That’s probably because you’ve been running through dimensions for more than half of your life, but you meet Dipper and click with him, because you understand how his brain works and you think the same things a lot and you both love the same things! You haven’t experienced this level of joy in communication with another human since-

Well.

 

In hindsight, you probably project quite a few of the traits you saw the two of you sharing onto him, or at least amplify the things that you two shared to yourself to a greater acuity than Dipper actually experiences them at.

 

Either way, you are wrong. You are bad; you know that. You are awful and you hurt Dipper and you hurt Mabel and you hurt Stanley even though Stanley doesn’t matter; Stanley _can’t_ matter. And you cause every single bad thing and you deserve to be tortured by Bill for every crime you committed against your family.

All you can see is black and blue and the carmine red eyelids when you close your eyes. You felt your heart stop and start but you cannot give in to Bill’s torture. You adored him, once, because he told you that you were _smart_ and that you would _change the world_. You may have destroyed Gravity Falls, but you would take the equation to destroy the barrier that cages Bill in this stupid town to your grave.

Let him kill you! Let him end your life! You have nothing to live for; nothing but his destruction; but in the haze of pain and electricity skittering over your skin like insects, you can’t remember why you need to live.

And then the kids are there, and Stanley is there, and _Fiddleford_ -

Maybe you don’t need to be a lone hero.

But Stanley is insufferable, like a wound that keeps reopening and you can’t help but pick at the scab he leaves behind.

Maybe you should have been a lone hero all along.

And maybe Stanley is trying to steal your place as a hero, but deep down you knew that it’s the only way. And you knew that you can’t lie to yourself anymore, because he is your brother. He always has been. He is the rock; impervious to erosion and standing still and sturdy in the storm.

And you are the one who ruins everything, and you must shatter him.

 

In hindsight, you would have much preferred if Bill could have been defeated by letting him into your mind and just. Well. You wouldn’t have subjected the kids to that. You wouldn’t subject the kids to this, either, but you have to and it’s _gone_.

 

 _He’s_ gone.

The sun rises, and the day begins anew, and your brother returns. Piece by piece, like a huge statue being reassembled by tiny fingers and a tube of scrapbook glue. Some bits are gone forever, but they are small, or scary, and Stan laughs and says _good riddance_. Good riddance to Hal Forrester and Andrew Alcatraz and Steve Pinington because he is Stanley Effing Pines and he doesn’t need ten years in which nothing good happened.

Gravity Falls, though. Gravity Falls had roots for Stanley. It was where he grew, truly, stunted less now that his brother had been replaced by a huge machine in the basement. Gravity Falls was where Stan had found Soos, and Wendy, and all those people who would greet him as he walks along the road.

Gravity Falls has nothing for you but an endless forest filled with even more freaks of nature than you already are.

In hindsight, you wish that you had said goodbye to Dipper and Mabel and Stanley, cut all ties with them, and wandered into the woods. Maybe have a stare out with a gremloblin, just for the hell of it. You know that you would see Bill, but it would be funny to see what position you would be in.

If you did just go and face that fear, maybe your family would find you. Maybe you would recover, nursed and loved by your family. Maybe you would remove the metal plate that the Oracle had so carefully attached to your skull and go with Fiddleford’s coping mechanisms. Maybe you’d die as a crazy wreck, shitting your pants as the vultures circle above.

But you don’t.

You throw away all of your old research into the Bottomless Pit; the life’s work that once seemed so important and now feels like a heavy curse. You stay with Dipper and Mabel all the way to their thirteenth birthday. You ask Stanley to sail around the world with you, like _that’s_ a good idea. One of you would probably purposefully fall overboard within the first few months, whether by his brother’s hand or his own. You smile as the kids go home. You love them. You love your brother. You love the rest of your weird, silly, sarcastic, wonderful family.

 

In hindsight, maybe you should have expected them to love you the same amount.

 

Because it starts with tight hugs and falling asleep in the same chair, and it grows with midnight phone calls, and Wendy nudges your shoulder with a smile, and Mabel’s friend Candy tells you that you and Stanley really need to talk before you leave on that boat trip.

It continues with you and Stanley talking and at the end of that long conversation feeling that you are both less likely to fall overboard.

It continues with making things to help around the Shack, sometimes with desperation and the knowledge that this is the only bit of usefulness that he still retains, and sometimes with a small contented tune being hummed.

It continues with long talks and hot chocolate with Fiddleford and the best way to build death rays, but only theoretically. Or in practise. It might come in handy!

It continues with the ebb and flow of ocean waves and looking over at your brother and smiling, because this feels like home just as much as Gravity Falls does.

It continues over months, with photographs being sent across this new technology that developed over the thirty years that you were gone, and fuzzy video chats of Mabel flapping her hands and Dipper laughing genuinely.

It continues as you lie in bed one morning and realise that you haven’t had a self-destructive thought or a dream about Bill in a while and you quietly smile, filled with euphoria. Of course, the Bill nightmares start again that night, but you don’t react as horribly this time. Not after the time that you made Stanley cry.

It continues through years of unrecorded monster hunting, and occasionally wondering where your journals ended up, before sharing a drink or three with Stan as the sun rises and sets and starting a new day.

It continues as you dock the boat for the last time and you both head home, because your bodies are weary and old, and Soos and Melody and Stanley Junior and all of their foster kids welcome you with open arms. When you visit Fiddleford’s grave, Wendy shows up by chance when she visits her parents and she calls them both old codgers. Stan pulls her down and gives her a noogie as you laugh, leaving a bouquet of irises and lily-of-the-valley.

It continues as Mabel and Dipper move in and transform the basements from empty crypts that once held all of Ford’s deepest regrets to what are frankly pretty nice little apartments.

It continues as the twins grow up into fine adults, and it all seems to be going perfectly, with nightmares about Bill decreasing to once a month at most.

 

In hindsight, you should have known exactly what it meant when Mabel screamed one morning.

 

It wasn’t a happy scream, but in your sleepy haze, you let yourself think that it was. You drifted back off to sleep until Dipper woke you up, holding a cup of coffee. He sat next to you until you had finished it, his face oddly sombre, and he tells you that-

He says-

He’s _lying_ -

He’s not-

Your brother is dead.

Stanley Pines is dead.

He doesn’t just have a gravestone. He has an entire crypt. You leave striped carnations and hyacinths on the coffin inside while Mabel decorates the outside with glitter. It’s tacky as hell. Stanley would have adored it.

 

In hindsight, you should have expected the thoughts to come back after that. Because you’re worthless, compared to Stanley. Stanley built a family, and all that you have to show for your life is the ridiculous amounts of times that you have screwed things up for everyone by being to insensitive, too flippant, too hurtful. It should have been you instead so that Stanley could spend his last years with actually decent human beings, but still, selfishly, you want to stay with him even now.

 

You don’t remember much for a while after the funeral, but after that, you are never by yourself in a room unless you have to pee. You’re only allowed with Soos and Melody’s kids if they have object permanence and an understanding of death.

You don’t celebrate your birthday that year.

And over the following year, the stinging hole in your chest where your twin used to be is not filled in, but it becomes less painful. Kind of like the cauterisation of an amputated limb. You go on, but it’s different now.

Sometimes, Dipper or Mabel will call you Grunkle Stan.

Sometimes, you correct them.

You spend next February in a haze, and leave marigolds at Stanley’s grave.

It’s just _difficult_.

Well, like that’s not the understatement of the fucking century.

It’s like living without most of your internal organs and staying alive through some kind of necromancy. When the thought flickers through your mind, you entertain it for one moment before you remember how rotted his body must be by now.

His spirit has probably moved on too. You could conduct a séance and see if he _did_ leave a ghost, but in all honesty you don’t really want to know if your brother is watching you make poorer life decisions every day.

You lie in bed a lot. You don’t know whether that’s because of your sick brain or your aging body. You don’t care, to be frank.

Mabel climbs into bed next to you sometimes, and she cuddles you. You’ve missed being hugged for long amounts of time. You don’t think that you ever had been, before Mabel. She tells you that it’s okay if you’re going through a rough spot, that she loves you, that she will always support you.

She doesn’t mention when you cry. She just squeezes you more.

 

In hindsight, Mabel was integral to your recovery. She would give Dipper your coffee to take up to you every morning, and you know this because she would write little sticky notes on the mug that gave a little encouragement, like _looking good!_ and _can you DM for the nerd kids today?_

 

Whenever she smiles, you can’t help but give a little smile back. It’s slightly fake at first, but as the months go by, your smiles become more and more real until you’re laughing softly one morning as Mabel beams, tears running down her cheeks. Dipper comes in and joins you both, not really understanding but embracing both his sister and you.

You only get up because your failing body malfunctioned and the twins have to do laundry as you stare at the wall in Stanley’s old, broken chair. The springs have long since worn down and broken, and it’s kind of uncomfortable, but it was Stanley’s, so nobody can bring themselves to throw it out. It feels nothing like him anymore. A stranger might as well have sat in this chair.

You’re never going to get over this, you realise. You are never going to recover from the grief of your brother’s death. He’s just going to remain forever in your mind. You will never stop seeing him in the mirror, or when you close your eyes, or in your new nightmares where a single eye bleeds and drips off an uncleft chin.

Mabel walks into the room, her footsteps gentle but audible, and clambers in to sit next to you and hold you close. She hums a gentle song that you used to sing with Fiddleford, then as you ran through dimensions, then when Mabel had sleepily asked you to sing one night.

You sob onto her chest like a child. She doesn’t let you go.

And she is there for you, night and day, and you can tell that she’s running herself ragged but she won’t quit, and she laughs off every concern and her friends visit and Candy reminds you so much of Fiddleford that it’s no wonder that he took her on as his apprentice. She gives everything that she has into keeping you occupied and happy, and when you ask her, she tells you funny stories about Stanley and you smile softly.

 

In hindsight, you realise that Stanley will, one day, be forgotten. His gruff voice, his bad jokes, his warm hugs. All of that will just be gone. And soon, Stanford will be too. Maybe if you had gone and made something of yourself; published Fiddeford’s thesis; written your own; maybe you would be remembered then. But as what? A scientist, yes, but not much past that. A madman, perhaps, and possibly more accurately.

 

But at the end of the world, who would really remember you? The cockroaches that survived the nuclear fallouts and exploding suns? Probably not, to be honest. Not much use for the weirdness of an old American town millennia into the future. Perhaps you will leave the mystery hunting to Dipper, Mabel, and their friends. They will not make your mistakes. They will learn, and grow, and love.

 

In hindsight, you have no regrets as you lie in your bed one night, knowing that you won’t wake up again.


End file.
